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How to | Make a Smoother or Rougher Plot
Mathematica gives you the ability to fine-tune the level of detail for your plots. To get a rough sketch of a plot, you can tell Mathematica to plot fewer points. The more points you have in a plot, the more detailed the results will be.
First, plot a simple function:
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Set the option Mesh->All to see the default sample points that Mathematica uses:
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You can adjust the number of sample points plotted with PlotPoints. MaxRecursion controls how many recursive subdivisions can be made:
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Setting values for PlotPoints and MaxRecursion high makes a very detailed picture at the cost of speed. AbsoluteTiming prints how long (in seconds) it takes to evaluate:
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Smaller values for PlotPoints and MaxRecursion give a rougher but much faster result:
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You can get a misleading result if these parameter values are chosen poorly. This is the accurate plot produced by Mathematica's default settings:
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Setting PlotPoints too low yields a misleading result:
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You can compensate for a low PlotPoints value by increasing MaxRecursion, but this will often take much longer, and may still be inaccurate:
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